As organizations move to become more efficient in today's competitive environments, the training of personnel of organizations is becoming increasingly important. The globalization of work and education, short innovation cycles, large amounts of information, and increased business competition have made more urgent the necessity for efficient training of personnel.
The need for training has also been increased by the widespread adoption of automated information technology systems within organizations. The utilization of computer and information systems, however, has placed an increased burden on organizations to train personnel in the utilization of such systems. While traditional training courses and seminars are of course somewhat effective, the conducting of such training courses is often limited to an employee-intake process, or are otherwise scheduled at times that are not particularly convenient for personnel. Training received too far in advance of use of a particular information tool, for example, may prove to be ineffective, while the scheduling of training courses at other times may interfere with work schedules. Accordingly, there has been a growth in the demand for so-called “just-in-time” learning and training.
One method to provide such “just-in-time” learning and training is through the deployment of computer-based training courses within an organization. Such computer-based training courses may be web-based, or alternatively may be provided as stand-alone applications to which the personnel have access. Computer-based training courses allow personnel to receive training at a time that is most beneficial (e.g., when the need arises to use a particular information tool or to perform a particular task), and at a time that is convenient.
The authoring of such computer-based training courses presents some challenges in and of itself. For a computer-based training course to be maximally effective, it is desirable that the training course be properly structured (e.g., in accordance with well-defined training course structures), and also include content that is engaging and useful to a trainee. Authoring tools that are currently available for the creation of computer-based training courses tend to be complex and user unfriendly, particularly to novice authors. Authoring tools typically provide extensive functionality, with which a novice user may not be familiar. The complexity of such tools may lead to a reluctance among authors to utilize the relevant authoring tool, and may also result in increased training costs for the authors themselves, both of which issues may contribute towards a higher total cost of ownership. The simplification of authoring tools, without sacrificing the rich functionality that such authoring tools must provide, presents a number of technical challenges.